The opening of a bottle may be closed with a bottle closure to preserve the contents therein. For example, the opening of a wine bottle may be closed with a resilient wine stopper, such as a cork, to preserve the wine therein. Wine and other bottle stoppers may be made of cork from the lightweight elastic outer bark of the cork oak, as well as other materials, such as plastic or rubber, that suitably form a seal with the bottle opening when used as a stopper.
The wine stopper may be positioned and compressed within the opening at the neck of the wine bottle to form a leak proof seal with the walls of the bottle. The wine stopper may not only prevent the wine from escaping from the bottle, but may also protect the wine from the surrounding conditions. For example, the favorable characteristics of wine may be negatively impacted by exposure to the elements of the surrounding environment, such as air. As such, it is advantageous to maintain the seal created between the bottle and the stopper.
The seal created between the bottle and stopper at the bottle opening may also be affected by the surrounding conditions. In particular, cork may be susceptible to drying, which may reduce the resiliency thereof, and cause the seal to fail. To better protect the cork from exposure to surrounding conditions, the neck of the wine bottle, with the cork positioned therein, may be covered with a wrapper. The material for the wrapper may be a metal foil or other material that is durable and helps keep the cork from drying or other damage. The wrapper may also protect the top of the bottle from damage, such as chipping. In addition to its protective function, the wrapper can also be used to add aesthetic appeal to the bottle.
When a bottle stopper, such as a cork, may be used in combination with a protective wrapper, opening the bottle may necessarily be performed in two steps. For example, the wrapper may first be removed, and thereafter the bottle stopper may be extracted from the bottle. A knife or a tool employing a blade may be used to cut the wrapper on the neck of the bottle. Then, a second tool, usually equipped with a spiral-shaped screw, which may be referred to as a corkscrew, may be used to manually capture the bottle stopper and manually pull the bottle stopper from the bottle opening. This technique of opening a bottle, such as a wine bottle, has the disadvantage of requiring two separate tools, such as a knife and a corkscrew.
Furthermore, the tools that may be employed to remove the wrapper and stopper as set forth above may be difficult to use. For example, in order to better function, the wrapper around the neck of the bottle may be relatively thick, and thus, the wrapper may be difficult to cut with a blade such as provided by a knife. In addition, a corkscrew may be difficult to manipulate. The user may have to manually rotate the corkscrew into the cork, involving the difficult task of applying enough force to cause penetration while keeping the corkscrew properly aligned with the center of the cork. Assuming the corkscrew is properly aligned and securely positioned in the cork, the user may then exert additional force to extract the cork, which may require the awkward task of positioning the bottle to gain proper leverage. If the corkscrew is not properly aligned or securely positioned in the cork, or the bottle may not be positioned to gain proper leverage to extract the cork, the result of these efforts may be a failure to successfully extract the cork.
While devices may have been developed to improve either the removal of the wrapper from the neck of the bottle or the extraction of the cork, such improvements still appear to suffer from significant disadvantages. In particular, like the bottle opening technique described above, these improvements may still require the user to utilize multiple devices with a varying range of motions to open a bottle.